The Prime Minister
by . New York: George H. Doran Co. 1920. 8vo, 388 pp. $4.00.
WHATEVER its title may imply, this book deals with a man, not with an institution. It is a biography of David Lloyd George, and is announced as‘the authoritative life’ of the resourceful Welshman whose hands have guided the British Empire through the turbulence of the last four years. In the sense that the author has had access to the inside sources of information, the volume is authoritative enough to pass muster; but there is also enough lavish eulogy in its pages to indicate that ‘twenty-seven years of unbroken friendship’ do not conduce to the dispensation of even-handed biographical justice. This is an intimate biography, and a stanchly partisan one as well.
The career of Lloyd George is one of the most amazing in modern political history. It was often said of Gladstone that his tastes were with the aristocrats and his principles with the mob. This saying might be inverted and applied with equally good reason to Lloyd George. Here is a man who began his public career as a militant Radical, an anti-imperialist, and a pacificist of the most assertive type. During the Boer War his attitude made him the most unpopular man in England, and brought him to the humiliation of being mobbed in his own constituency. But he emerged unscathed when the South African troubles were over, and within ten years proved his mastery of the Liberal party by placing his great budget of 1909 on the statute books. This victory he followed up by clipping the wings of the House of Lords; and ultimately, through the fortunes of war and politics, found himself at the head of what is to all intent a Tory government. Altogether a remarkable career, even in this hectic age, and it is not yet at an end!
Now it might be thought that a biographer would find great difficulty in following this Talleyrand of contemporary English politics without encountering, somewhere or other, a sacrifice of principles to ambition or expediency; but Mr. Spender finds no occasion to be an apologist anywhere. The gloss is put on rather thick in spots, however, and some awkward episodes are discreetly hurried over or omitted altogether. Take, for example, the manœuvres of December, 1916, in which Lloyd George outflanked Mr. Asquith and gained the post of prime minister for himself. Readers of the Atlantic will remember this dramatic clash, for the correspondence which passed between the two principals was first given to the public in the pages of this periodical. No doubt there were two sides to this affair, and to its aftermath as well; but Mr. Spender is careful not to spend any time on one of them. The arguments and protests of those who were on the losing side of this ministerial upset are dismissed in a single paragraph. ‘Such is the simple narrative of the events which made Mr. Lloyd George premier,’ he assures us; which indeed it is — much too simple.
Apart from its consistent flavor of idolatry, the book has important merits. It is not too long; its author writes well; and its statement of the facts, save in a few minor matters, is quite accurate. In places the narrative is rather unsatisfying, notably in the chapter on the Peace Conference, for the author’s eighteen pages are wholly inadequate for any enlightening discussion of what happened at this momentous gathering. Lloyd George, if his biographer is to be trusted, held the balance of power on most of the questions which came before the Conference; and had it not been for his genius in compromise, either President Wilson or Premier Clemenceau, one or the other, would have been ‘flung out of the Conference like Signor Orlando.’
Mr. Spender’s volume is, at any rate, one that may well appeal to two groups of readers — those who feel a genuine admiration for Lloyd George (there are thousands of Americans in this category), and those who want to put themselves into touch with the main currents of English political life during the last three decades. The theme of the book is of such absorbing interest that incidental shortcomings need deter no one from reading it, unless he be too firm a stickler for historical impartiality.
W. B. M.